Marisa and her Mother
by vifetoile89
Summary: Marisa Coulter reminisces about her mother - beautiful, terrifying, and completely alien... a woman with no daemon... Azula, Princess of the Fire Nation. A HDM/AtLA crossover. One-shot.


Marisa and her Mother

By Vifetoile

Disclaimer: I own nothing related to these series. The name 'Ozymandius' for Mrs. Coulter's dæmon comes from the radio dramatizations. If Mr. Pullman contradicts it, I'll rescind it, but for now it works well with the story as it is.

As for where this idea came from… it was just one of those peculiar ideas that demands to be written. So it goes. There is a companion story, 'Azula and her Daughter,' which will be quite longer, and which can be found on my profile.

Enjoy.

* * *

We always feared my mother, a little, my dæmon and I.

She had no dæmon, and we knew that was wrong, but she took care of us, taught us, inspired us.

It was during the day that she would tell me about the world she came from, the Fire Nation with the great gates of Azulon, about the blue sea and white sands of Ember Island. She told of the history of her world, the great spirit of Agni, the sun, and his truce with Tui and La, the Moon and Ocean. She would tell about the dragons that used to crisscross the sky in days of old, who would turn every sunset into a Mass, canopied with fire.

At twilight she would demonstrate firebending or even lightning bending for me, and become a creature of beauty and power. I never failed to be mesmerized by this display, and often wished it for myself.

She would become quiet at night, more focused on herself, more sullen. As the years wore on her she would talk to me as if I were someone much older. Sometimes she called me by strange names – 'Mai' or 'Ty Lee.' I thought of these as her fits, when she spoke to people who weren't there.

It was in these fits that I learned about my origin, how my mother had run away - (from what I now think was a mental institution) and found a gap between the two worlds, and gone through it without thinking. How she had found a man who spoke her language. He taught her enough English to survive, enough about our world to survive. She seemed proud of having seduced him – but she never mentioned his name, not that I remembered. That man was my father. Also, between her arrival in our world and my birth, she had realized something of what a dæmon was, and of the bond between dæmon and human. She lived among the witches for a while. She rarely spoke about that time.

She told me that when the witches told her she was pregnant, they said that _either_ I would bend fire, _or_ I would have a dæmon. Every day, she said, she'd pray to the sun to grant me the power of her own royal blood.

She never forgave me for not being a firebender.

At first she didn't understand why I needed him. She thought that maybe she could make me a firebender, like her, if I lost my dæmon. So she would try to lose him, or force him away from me. When she was in a mood, no one could force her away from her chosen path. And she meant no malice in it, of that I am sure – no more malice than any other parent who tries to force a child to resemble them. That was how my dæmon and I learned how far away we could go from each other.

Eventually she decided this was a bad idea.

She would tell me these stories at night and laugh.

When she realized that my soul was here to stay, she accepted him well enough. She named him Ozai, after her own father. This was a great honor. It allowed her to look on him fondly, which let her look on me more fondly.

What did she look like? It's difficult for me to remember now. When I think back on it… I would certainly say that she was of Chinese extraction. The fact that Chinese was my first language alongside English should tell you as much – it was how we spoke to each other. Her face was shaped like an inverted triangle. She had a small nose and full lips. Though she was naturally handsome, she was always capable of making herself appear more beautiful than she was – except for when she was in her fits. Or in the last stages of her illness.

And when I think about it, she was _young_. She was still a young woman – probably younger than I am now – when she departed from my life. I think I remember hearing her say she was nineteen when I was born.

Oh, there were her hands. And her hair. Her fingers were long and always had a callus on their ends – I remember her saying that the callused fingers are the mark of a firebender. If she could, she always kept her fingernails long, so long she couldn't hold my hand – they were the sign of royalty. That's a trait in common with the Chinese court. How interesting.

Then her hair was long and black. When she could afford it, she doused it with perfumes. When she couldn't, then – it always smelled like iron, I could never tell why. But the scent was heavy, always lingering a little. She had two locks of hair in the front of her head. One was dramatically shorter than the other one. These were only cut when she went into the hospital, and after that incident she insisted on cutting her own hair. The different locks seemed important to her, almost like a scar that she retained on purpose.

So, day by day we – wait. I forgot her eyes. How could I forget them? They were slanted upwards slightly, and they were a color I've never seen in any other eye – a bright and piercing gold. Their expressions were as multitudinous as the flames that my mother produced from her hands. You can see some of their color in my own.

Yes. Now I can see her clearly.

Day by day, this was how we went, my mother, my daemon, and I. The sun gave her energy, let her interact with others, coax and wheedle the man that we lived with. This man was not my father, but he kept my mother and I, and let her help him with his finances.

If she and I were alone at night, she would bathe me and comb my hair – saying that a princess should be waited on, reminding me that I was a princess. She would boast that one day she'd return to the world she came from and take it back – she and I together, even with my dæmon, we'll go and take back the Fire Nation from her brother the traitor, the scarred, and she'll destroy the Avatar, the all-powerful. These were my bedtime stories, and like I said, she inspired me.

When she was years older, the nights changed her. She would grow hallucinatory and sullen, and would bend fire to calm herself, in quiet exercises. Some nights, when we were all alone, she would bend lightning.

You can see how this influenced me to grow the way I did. I became fascinated with the difference between human and dæmon, and the bond between them. I recognized that the human will could undertake great feats – the generation of fire and lightning – and I wanted to apply that force to other areas. My mother also taught me about deception, and how to lie like a breath, to lie to one's very core. But there were more forces at work, ones that I didn't realize until year later, after my mother vanished.

You see, my dæmonless mother was getting sicker, year by year.

She could not take care of me forever. I remember how my life with her came to a close. I was seven years old, of that I have no doubt. We had just been taken from the house of the Gentleman – the man who had kept her as a mistress for as long as I could remember. He had not dared to send my mother onto the streets. Instead he summoned the agents of the Magisterium to seize her and I – her because she had no dæmon, nor had ever had one, and I because I was her daughter.

How did the Gentleman realize that she had no dæmon? I think it was because she had had a terrible fever and was near to death, but on her recovery he realized that any real dæmon would have come to her side in such a moment, no matter how far away. He'd thought she was a witch, you see.

She'd try to convince him otherwise, but she'd been weakened and hadn't realized how the ordeal of the fever had drained away much of her beauty. As for me, an innocent child, he turned me over to the soldiers without so much as a second glance.

We still lived in Geneva, but never let outside the walls of the vast cloaked city of the Magisterium. We were kept in tightly contained rooms and guarded around the clock. Mother was often summoned away to Court, and I was quizzed, drilled in fact, on morality and theology, and did I testify to the Resurrection of the Dead and the Communion of Saints? I said I would be willing to learn.

What I do know is that those weeks changed my life. I barely saw my mother. When she was in our chambers, she took more and more to her bed and snapped if she was disturbed. However, I loved the hours of prayer, even at midnight. I'd wake up just to listen to them. The stories they told me, populated with people who had dæmons, just hit me to my core. My Ozai delighted in those tales with a joy that our mother could never bestow. The monks, nuns, and priests were always clean. They were dedicated to one cause, the glory and service of God. They spoke without any sort of accent, with ease, and calmly. They began to teach me catechism.

On Good Friday of that year, the pastor – I still remember his name, Father Eustacius – told me, very solemnly, that I had a choice to make. Did I want to continue living with my dæmon-less mother in the way that we had been, like a heathen, or did I want to become baptized and be a good little Christian? If I agreed to be baptized, my mother would be taken care of for the rest of my life and she would be brought to the faith, too, misshapen and incomplete as she was. Perhaps with the help of God and the good priests, her dæmon could be recovered and restored to her.

I signed away our lives with delight, and the following Easter morn saw the most pure and blissful little girl arrive for baptism, clutching her dæmon, a white dove, to her breast as the cold, slightly stale water was poured on her head. I told them that my mother had named my dæmon Ozai, and the priests and nuns agreed that such a name, from such a person, was surely Satanic, so they elaborated it: Ozymandius, from the name of an ancient, near-forgotten saint, was given to my dæmon at baptism. My mother did not attend, nor object.

My mother was still ill, and she did not get better. All of her strength went to her hearings before the Magisterium. She would come back and collapse, exhausted, without the strength to tell me stories or comb my hair. I missed her combing my hair, but I didn't miss the stories. Not until many years later.

The days seem to flow past, each the same – I was busy with my studies and did not take much notice of her. However, one day things started to change. My clothes, books, and few little toys (most of them broken) were packed away into a large suitcase. I was given a thick wool coat to wear, "for traveling." I wore it the next day, when Father Eustacius told me I was going to see my mother.

I went into her chamber, which was also packed up and compartmentalized as if she would be leaving soon. The sister who nursed her, and the sister who was my personal nanny, sat in the room with us (both of them disgusted by her, dæmonless as she was). But my mother spoke to me in her own language, so like to the Chinese tongue, so it was like only the two of us talking.

From out of her wasted face, her gold eyes watched me jealously. She took my hands in hers – her fingernails were still very long, but they were more fragile. She told me that the court would take me away from her, and raise me in another family, pious and plebian, with dæmons like my own. Would I be happy this way?

I nodded. I could lie by that age, but I did not lie to her. She would always know.

She said that very soon she and I would be parted, and we should probably never see each other again.

As she said that, she put her hand on my hair, and spoke in a more gentle fashion than I'd ever known her to. At that moment, I realized three things: that was no longer afraid of my mother, that I loved her, and that she loved me.

But I did not hug her, I did not cry, and neither did she. She merely spoke in that same, strange, gentle voice.

She said she had done everything in her power to make sure my life would be happy and wealthy.

She told me to go out and accomplish great things and to never fear, and to never give my heart away, but to keep it within me, my own pure flame.

She told me to always remember that I was a princess, the descendant of kings and queens, and of the Sun god himself.

And last, she told me to remember her – "as I will remember you, always, and everywhere."

I answered that I would remember. Always and everywhere.

Then, she kissed my forehead, and she let me go, saying I could leave if I wanted. I decided I didn't want to. I sat on the edge of the bed and played with my dæmon – I had him change shapes into every sort of creative creature we could imagine, and I would try to catch him. This game had delighted my mother when I was little. Now he couldn't change quite as freely as before, but we still gave the game an earnest effort. She rewarded us with a little smile. I still didn't want to leave, so I took out my book of catechism and read from it as she carefully wrote out a little note.

But the characters in the catechism seemed flat, stale, and unprofitable, without passion or depth or anything to fight for, really. And then I became aware of her singing something,

"_Leaves from the vine,_

_Falling so slow,_

_Like fragile tiny shells_

_Drifting in the foam._

_Little soldier boy,_

_Come marching home._

_Brave soldier boy,_

_Come marching home."_

Her voice trembled a little bit as she sang it. But on the last note the door opened and she stopped singing abruptly. A bishop stood in the doorway, an older man with blond hair and clear blue eyes. He nodded to the two sisters in the room, and then looked at my mother – and at me. He approached us.

My mother turned to me. "Marisa," she said, in English, "This man is your guardian now. You will go with him," she turned to glare at him, with a very faint smile playing around the corners of her mouth, "and he shall take care of you."

I didn't look at the priest. I just looked at my mother, at her brave, broken face, and hugged her tightly.

She hugged me back, without hesitation, but knew when the time was right to let me go.

Ozai and I slid off of the bed. I clung to my mother's hand as she said, "Farewell, Marisa. May you walk with honor."

I had no words. I was so young. But I quickly kissed her hand, once, like a princess.

When I looked up she was smiling with delight, approval, and a certain amount of amusement. She held my hand a moment longer, and kissed it in return.

"Come, my child," said the priest. Then, to my mother, he said, in a soft voice, "May God be with you. Farewell, Azula."

I turned for one last look at her. Her golden eyes were unreadable, but she flashed a triumphant smile at the bishop and me. At that moment, she was beautiful again.

And on that day, I left Geneva for the first time and was brought to England. Father Marius – for he was my guardian – arranged for me to be adopted by a rich and childless couple, who reared me as their own. Father Marius checked my progress regularly, and I came into a respectable inheritance when he died, (not that my adoptive parents left me a pittance either). However, from there I had to make my own fortune, and became quite caught up in the affairs of my own world.

Only once, shortly before my Confirmation, did I ask Father Marius what had happened to my mother. His face became unreadable and he said that the Magisterium was going to relocate her to a convent in Scotland. Before I could begin to wonder if I could possibly visit her, he added that the train that had been supposed to convey her there had been wrecked in an explosion, and her body had never been recovered.

I shut my mouth, and held my peace. Ozymandius sprang into my arms and curled up close to me. I knew better.

Then I looked at Father Marius, and was surprised by something else. He knew just as well as I had, that my mother must have survived.

I think about her surprisingly rarely – and when I do think of her, I'm surprised that someone like her could have existed, let alone have raised me. And then I'm surprised that I could forget her, and be raised to the position I'm in – adopted by the right people, befriended the right people, sponsored by the right people, married the right man – and then. And then, I had a child that destroyed and reshaped my world, just as my mother did, and her mother before her.

It makes me wonder. I now have no doubt at all that my mother was all that she said – only a princess could have carried herself the way she did, and she bent fire and had no dæmon – that was enough proof of her origin from another world, that and her wasting illness. But her fire never went out completely. Our world couldn't snuff it.

Oh, I can easily picture her bones lying somewhere up north, her eye sockets still above ground, gaping desperately for that window back to her own world.

But then again, a part of me wants to imagine that she did find that window again, and that in her world she regained strength and won back the throne from the scarred pretender, and cut down the Avatar once and for all. A part of me wants to hope that she got the life she wanted, with only a few regrets now and again for the child she left in a convent.

I did well for myself, after all, Ozai and I. Even we cannot decide if his name is Ozai or Ozymandius, now, but it does not matter. He may not speak on the matter, but I look at my hands – I keep my fingernails long even to this day – and know that the blood of the Fire Nation royalty runs through them. With a conviction like that, one is bound to lead an extraordinary life.


End file.
